iPad-maker Foxconn is the world's 10th biggest employer, and can count staff members over half those of China's Red Army, according to a new piece of research by the BBC.
Altogether 1.2 million people are employed in the Taiwanese assembly and electronics company, which churns out the world's most popular gadgets including the …

Re: if

Re: The NHS is the fifth biggest organisation in the world with 1.7 million employees

If you're interested, why not look it up....

The first result I came across (from the BBC) is claiming 41,962 managers. That's one manager to every 40 employees.

Whenever I've worked for a company with a ratio of around 40+ employees to the lowest rung manager, it's been a f$%£ing disaster. Those Managers have *no* slack to cope with anything "out of the ordinary". I'd say hire more managers.

Re:Sensible question

"How many of the 1.7 million NHS workers are directly involved in the fixing and welfare of sick people?"

In 2009 NHS staff comprised:

Doctors - 11%

Nurses - 29%

Scientific / technical / therapeutic staff - 11%

Ambulance staff - 1%

GP practice staff - 5%

Property and estates staff - 5%

Central admin / finance / HR etc - 9%

Managers - 4%

If you're adding these up as you go you'll find there's 25% missing - these were listed as "Support to clinical staff" - frankly I couldn't tell you if that makes them clinical staff, non-clinical staff or a mix of both.

Of all of the above I couldn't tell you how many are "skivers", "scumbags" or "ne'er-do-wells", but I'm sure it won't affect your eventual care in their hands if you carry on believing it is the proportion you currently assume it to be.

Re: The NHS is the fifth biggest organisation in the world with 1.7 million employees

All of those probably do do something useful. Back office and admin doesn't just happen by itself, you know. Scalpels don't fly from manufacturer to warehouse to theatre as the surgeon mutters "Scalpel, swab" to the nurse.

Re: The NHS is the fifth biggest organisation in the world with 1.7 million employees

I've long suspected that the NHS is the employment version of council housing; a post-war socialist gift to the nation for having relatives who were shot at by Germans and Japanese. The health thing is just a cover.

The left do have difficulty accurately naming things. Rebuilding bits of existing schools with money borrowed from the future? That'll be BSF then.

Re: The NHS is the fifth biggest organisation in the world with 1.7 million employees

Well someone has already given some figures for a while ago, but I think you are being highly unfair on the many "pen pushers", "desk jockeys", "IT support staff", etc. I assume pretty much everyone among other things would like their medical records kept in some kind of order, maybe some kind of letter to inform them of their appointments and results, someone to answer the phone perhaps when you ring for that ambulance, someone to repair the medical equipment when it breaks down. Your comment seems to suggest that you feel these sort of jobs are pretty unimportant and unnecessary, and the people that do them are nothing but opportunistic scumbags, whereas personally I think the vast majority do a very good job. I also happen to think that you sir, are a fucking moronic idiot.

NHS no more...

NHS employment numbers will fall dramatically over the next 2 years now that the Lords have passed the NHS reforms bill. End result, many of those employees will be laid off, or transferred to private suppliers of services.

Re: Missed a Big one

Biggest by salaries paid?

Id be curious to see who are the biggest in terms of salaries paid. I imagine the NHS who employ a high number of skilled people would still be pretty high but the likes of Foxcon and the Chinese army would be somewhat lower.

Obviously it gets confusing when you take into account top executives because of the various tax dodging schemes such as being paid in shares with only a nominal salary.

Odd counting

McDonald's isn't a single entity like Walmart is. McDonald's is a franchise consisting of many independently owned shops where all Walmart stores are corporate owned. I'm sure if they added up the total workers of all the private US healthcare facilities it would have also made the list as the NHS did. Hmm, it seems as I just compared the healthcare systems of the US and UK to McDonald's and Walmart without really wanting to. It would be a more fair comparison if McBurgers cost $1000.

Fifth biggest?

Interesting piece on the beeb

The beeb mentions the Foxconn suicides and notes that the reported suicide rate among their workers is significantly lower than the Chinese average. Now that average is for the whole population rather than the industry and I'm guessing that many more have happened offshift but it does make you think.

Re: Interesting piece on the beeb

Did anyone notice that Apple

is on track to be the world's largest mobile CPU company? (Last year they shipped 176 million mobile processors compared to Intel's 181 million mobile CPU's). With their homegrown ARM A4,A5 and A5X increase in sales looks like apple will outsell intel in the mobile sector later this year. That's even without last year's rumour about the MBair eventually going parallel ARM which would boost Apple's own CPU's whilst declining intel's x86 share. or not.

just bought a cheap AMD x64 Foxconn motherboard for a PC chassis - so I'm not adding to either of the two competitors.

Re: Did anyone notice that Apple

Firstly, whatever CPU family Samsung or Nokia put in their $40 phones will dwarf those numbers. Even at the Series40/Bada level of featurephones, the numbers still exceed Apple's.

Intel are a minnow in mobile CPUs (mobile does not include laptops), so saying "hey, we beat Intel in moble CPU sales" is like saying "hey, we beat BMW in scooter sales". Compare with Texas Instruments, Qualcomm, ST-Ericsson or nVidia for a more accurate picture.

I suspect that the rationale behind the "A(n)" chips was to prevent counterfeiting, rather than to improve system performance. The current crop of SoCs from specialists like Ti, ST-Ericsson, Qualcomm and nVidia seem to be better all round than Apple's chips, but if Apple used those devices in the iOS products, it'd become very easy for Chinese manufacturers to start making iPhone/iPad clones.

Having your own custom silicon makes things easier in that respect, but it's a stupid move in the long run. Apple have been here before, and realised it was a stupid move before; and I don't mean using 68k/PPC while everyone used Intel (there were solid technical arguments, particularly in power consumption, that made sense), but rather using custom IO and memory controllers when their CPU supplier had perfectly good (and better debugged) parts available.